Legacy and Accountability
The International Accountability Project works to challenge persistent gaps in accountability at international financial institutions (IFIs), and to promote systemic change that will ensure respect for human rights and the environment. We give practical advice to affected communities about how to hold IFIs accountable and help to document violations of human and environmental rights. We also work with allies to build sustained pressure on these institutions to respect and abide by international standards. Finally, as the saying goes, “a right without a remedy is no right at all,” and so we are working to promote the right of redress for communities whose rights have been violated in the context of international development projects.
Our work builds on the stepping stones of accountability laid by decades of civil society efforts to promote principles of justice, accountability, sustainability, gender equity, development effectiveness, transparency and participation at IFIs. However, our work in solidarity with affected communities makes painfully clear that there are persistent gaps in accountability that have not yet been properly addressed, including failures relating to project supervision, and the lack of effective remedial measures in cases where it has been established that policies have been violated and local people are suffering harm as a result.
In our Legacy and Accountability program, we work with grassroots, national and international civil society organizations to promote principles of justice and accountability, including efforts to demand effective remedial measures for failed development projects. We work to:
- Help civil society to understand and effectively utilize citizen-driven accountability mechanisms at IFIs. Resource tools include the Strategic Guide to the Inspection Panel and the Citizen’s Guide to the World Bank Inspection Panel, which can be found via our publications page. See also the Institutions page for more information about citizen-based accountability mechanisms at IFIs.
- Ensure that systems of accountability are fully effective, including mechanisms for ensuring remedial measures and policy compliance.
- Call attention to gaps and failures in accountability, both institutional and project-specific, and make suggestions for how these failures should be addressed.
- Empower affected communities and their allies to assert their rights effectively, through site visits, strategic advice, advocacy support, and information dissemination.
- Strengthen long-term working relationships between colleagues in the global south and the global north who are working on interlinked issues of human rights and the environment, including facilitating and participating in international networks.
- Stop the externalization of project costs onto local people and the environment, which includes challenging particular problem projects and also the development paradigms and policy frameworks that allow destructive projects to happen.
